Chatroom is as subtle as a happy slap

‘Welcome to the Anti-Social Network’ runs the clever-pants tagline to this cheap-looking Brit horror. A group of whiny young people meet in an internet chatroom called Chelsea Teens! (cringe).

All begins chattily enough but soon sinisterly morphs into a suicide club under the guidance of its founder, William (Kick-Ass’s Aaron Johnson), an articulate posh boy with a groaning tuck-hamper of ‘issues’ whose mummy, a best-selling children’s author, is a thinly cloaked version of JK Rowling.

Given that this is the first (original) English language film by J-horror god Hideo Nakata (Ringu) and based on a 2005 play by Irish playwright Enda Walsh (who co-wrote Steve McQueen’s award-winning Hunger), this cyber-bullying drama sounded potentially non-terrible.

Yet where The Social Network explored with finesse and subtlety the way online communication is changing human behaviour, this is about as subtle as a playground happy-slap.